Domain-Specific Languages: A Systematic Mapping Study

Context: In this study we report on a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) for Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), based on an automatic search including primary studies from journals, conferences, and workshops during the period from 2006 until 2012. Objective: The main objective of the described work was to perform an SMS on DSLs to better understand the DSL research field, identify research trends, and any possible open issues. The set of research questions was inspired by a DSL survey paper published in 2005. Method: We conducted a SMS over 5 stages: defining research questions, conducting the search, screening, classifying, and data extraction. Our SMS included 1153 candidate primary studies from the ISI Web of Science and ACM Digital Library, 390 primary studies were classified after screening. Results: This SMS discusses two main research questions: research space and trends/demographics of the literature within the field of DSLs. Both research questions are further subdivided into several research sub-questions. The results from the first research question clearly show that the DSL community focuses more on the development of new techniques/methods rather than investigating the integrations of DSLs with other software engineering processes or measuring the effectiveness of DSL approaches. Furthermore, there is a clear lack of evaluation research. Amongst different DSL development phases more attention is needed in regard to domain analysis, validation, and maintenance. The second research question revealed that the number of publications remains stable, and has not increased over the years. Top cited papers and venues are mentioned, as well as identifying the more active institutions carrying DSL research. Conclusion: The statistical findings regarding research questions paint an interesting picture about the mainstreams of the DSL community, as well as open issues where researchers can improve their research in their future work. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.